Boost Your Metabolism: The Science-Backed Strategies You Haven't Tried
Introduction
Struggling with weight loss? It might not be your metabolism's fault after all.
In this enlightening episode, Dr. Orlena breaks down the science of metabolism and shares practical, evidence-based strategies to optimize your body's energy-burning potential. You'll discover why protein timing matters more than you think, how strength training can transform your results (even with just 5 reps!), and why emotional wellness might be the missing piece in your metabolism puzzle.
Whether you're looking to lose weight or simply boost your energy, this episode delivers a comprehensive framework through Dr. Orlena's signature four-pillar approach: healthy food, energizing exercise, quality sleep, and emotional wellness. Stop blaming your metabolism and start understanding how to work with it – your transformation begins here.
Transcription of Podcast
Dr Orlena (00:01.166)
Hello, hello, hello, hello. Welcome to Fit and Fabulous with me, Dr. Orlena . I hope that you are feeling amazing today. My goodness, how can it already be near the end of January? How has that happened? Okay, today I want to talk about metabolism and how we can boost our metabolism and why that might be a good thing, particularly if you are trying to lose weight. So many people say, oh my goodness, I can't lose weight because I've got a slow metabolism. Well,
Understanding Metabolism
Let's have a think about that and think about is that true and what you can do about it. So first of all, what is your metabolism? Your metabolism is basically the process through which your body converts what you eat and drink into energy. And to be perfectly honest, it's quite complex and it really just is the power station of everything, everything we do from breathing, growing, thinking.
of the energy that we have to do everything. Now, we measure energy in calories. Calories are just a unit of energy. And your body is burning energy all the time, whether you are active or at rest, or whether you are even asleep. Even when we're asleep, we're actually very active in terms of burning calories. Well, as opposed to doing nothing. It's not like we just turn off like a computer. Now,
It turns out that actually your genetic makeup is the biggest factor in your metabolism. However, that doesn't mean to say there aren't ways that you can boost your metabolism. And hey, little sneak peek, the most amazing thing about boosting your metabolism is all the things we're gonna talk about are all the things that I talk about all the time. So.
Dr Orlena's Four Pillars of Health
Just a reminder to give you a framework in case, I don't know, you've been asleep or forgotten or you're new to the podcast. The way that I teach you to either lose weight or if your weight is where you want to be, it might be that you want to lead a healthier lifestyle and the two of them are very connected or at least in my world they are. So we have four pillars. Pillar number one is enjoying healthy food. So healthy food includes
Dr Orlena (02:20.878)
plant-based, which doesn't mean you have to give up meat. You want to be getting enough protein, you want to be getting enough fiber, you want to be eating vegetables really, or fruit and vegetables, getting your carbohydrates from a healthy source of carbohydrates. And really thinking about minimizing highly processed foods because they're just not good for us basically. Pillar number two, exercise that lights you up. And you want to be doing some cardiovascular exercise and you also, if you're
over 40 or well really if you're not over 40, anybody should be doing some strength exercising as well. And then pillar number three is what I call delicious healthy sleep. You want to be getting a good eight hours sleep and you really want to be making sure that you're getting good quality sleep and there's so many things that you can do to help that and we have a couple of podcasts on them if that's something that you're interested in. Now pillar number four is emotional wellness and emotional wellness includes
your stress levels, it includes your relationship with others, it includes your relationship with your food. So if you are somebody who turns to food for comfort, that is part of pillar number four. And you can see how all of these pillars are very connected and how really you want to be making sure that you're a good solid, what I call 80 % in all four of those pillars. So what are we gonna do to increase our metabolism? Well,
we can do a lot of things.
Nutrition and Metabolism
Let's start with pillar one. We can eat healthier. So what do we wanna do when we're eating healthily? We want to make sure that we're getting enough protein. So thinking about protein, where are you getting protein from? You can be getting protein either from meat or dairy products, or if you want plant-based proteins, you can be getting beans and lentils and things like that.
And there are obviously other sources of plant-based. So thinking about edamames and nuts and chia seeds. So there's lots of different ways of getting protein. And you might be, you might actually need to supplement your protein. It's fine to take a protein powder. I personally use hemp powder, which is vegan and also comes with fiber. So that fits in with how I want to eat. So how does protein really help you to increase your metabolism?
Dr Orlena (04:47.118)
Well, what it does is, let me just quickly look at my notes. It can temporarily increase your metabolism and it's what's called the thermic effect of food. So protein causes the largest rise of thermic effect of food, which allows us to increase our metabolism for a bit. eating protein can also sort of help you drop
sorry, reduce the drop in metabolism, which is often associated with losing fat. So everybody agrees that eating enough protein is what you need to do, particularly if you're losing weight, if you're aiming to lose weight. One of the things about losing weight is you want to make sure that you lose fat and that you don't lose muscle. And muscle is basically made of protein. How do you protect your muscle? You eat protein and you do some strength exercising. So we're gonna give a tick to protein.
unrefined carbohydrates, which are basically healthy sources of carbohydrates, fiber rich foods that aren't highly processed, can increase energy expenditure because they take longer to digest. So thinking about vegetables and fruits and whole grains and legumes, all of these things, plant-based healthy food. Tick, tick, tick. Okay, what else have we got in nutrition? Caffeine. Hooray for caffeine.
So caffeine is supposed to help us increase our metabolism and also there are there is some research that things like green tea and oolong tea can increase our metabolism now, I think the research behind those things is not quite as Up-to-date as Sorry, it's not quite as strong evidence as some of the other things now also Not skipping meals is another good
thing to do when you are thinking about metabolism and losing weight. And I think one of the things that we see is if you really try to lose weight by going on a calorie restricted diet, actually what can happen is you can reduce your metabolism because your metabolism gets a bit like, wait, there's not enough calories here. And so your metabolism actually slows down. Equally with skipping meals, particularly breakfast, particularly for women, it can really reduce your metabolism.
Dr Orlena (07:10.05)
Just keep eating breakfast and keep fueling your body as your body needs. Now, is that everything I have for nutrition? Yes, it is.
Exercise and Metabolism
Let's move on to pillar number two, exercise. So there's different ways that exercise can increase your metabolism. Number one, strength training exercises. So exercises that are really about...
building your muscle. And I've just come back from the gym. go to the gym on Tuesday and Thursday, whereas on Monday, Wednesday and Friday, I do cardiovascular, I do my swimming training. And I came back from the gym today and I said to my husband, you know, I've changed my routine a little bit in that I have increased the amount of weight I use, but I'm only doing five reps instead of eight. So I don't know if you listened to the podcast that I did a week or two ago, referencing Dr. Stacey Sims.
podcast that she did with Dr. Andrew Huberman and she is an expert in women's exercise physiology and she recommends for women over 50 and I'm gonna be 50 next week or the week after that they do more weights but less reps. So that is what I have been doing. And surprisingly, it doesn't take as long because you're doing less. So I come back from the gym and I think I really feel like I haven't.
done very much. Now, obviously I've done what I set out to do, but it's not the same as cardiovascular. When I've done cardiovascular, when I'm swimming, when I'm cycling, I feel like I've done exercise. When I go to the gym, even though I'm doing my strength training, I come back thinking, I haven't really done very much, but strength training is really important. So strength training, building up your muscle is going to...
increase your metabolism. Why? Because muscle burns more calories than fat. So if you have more muscle, you're burning more calories. Now on top of that, things like HIIT, high intensity interval training, where you're doing quick and very intense bursts of activity, you want to make sure this is safe for you. You don't want to be pushing your body to do things that your body can't do. So thinking about, you know, jumping, if you're not very mobile, don't rush in and start jumping.
Dr Orlena (09:26.06)
up and down because you're going to injure yourself. But HIIT and also CIT, is, brain is not functioning, sprint interval training, which is very similar, it can increase your metabolism too. And that is because your muscle cells are burning energy and it really helps you to burn fat, particularly women who actually use more...
intramuscular fat than men do in terms of exercise. So it's another great way to be using some exercise, excuse me, using some of that fat and energy and increasing your metabolism. Standing up as well. So making sure that you are not really sedentary all the time. So I always say that sitting is the new smoking in terms of
You know, we sit for a long period of time in the day and that is not good for our body. So just moving around a little bit can help you increase your metabolism. And if you have any kind of sports watch, I love my Apple watch, but it can be any watch. If it does that annoying thing where it says to you every hour, get up, get up, get up, go and do some exercise, pay attention to that and go and do some exercise and make sure that you are including some movement in your day because it can be super easy to just sit and...
not do anything. Okay, what else have I got? Oh, one thing I didn't mention going back to nutrition was apparently spicy foods can increase your metabolism. So particularly peppers, there's a compound called, and I'm not quite sure how to pronounce this actually, capsaicin, and that is supposed to help increase your metabolism as well. Again, it's one of those things where like the research isn't 100%, but you know, if you like spicy food, well, by all means go and...
drink some, eat some spicy foods. Okay, so we've done pillar one, nutrition, pillar two, exercise, pillar three, sleep, get a good night's sleep. So getting a good night's sleep can help you have a better metabolism. I don't know about you, but if I am feeling tired, I often feel hungry as well. And it's partly because
Dr Orlena (11:43.436)
your levels of ghrelin, is what's called the hunger hormone, and your leptin, which is a hormone that controls feeling full up, are out of kilter, so you don't, they're not in the levels that they're supposed to be. But basically, sleep is really important for metabolism, it's really important for weight loss as well. Let me see, anything else? Now, I couldn't find anything specifically on emotions, but what I would say when we're thinking about
pillar number four is that pillar number four really feeds into all of the other three pillars. So when your pillar number four is out, when you're highly stressed, then you eat more, you don't exercise more.
Dr Orlena (13:04.492)
And we do know that chronic stress will affect your metabolism and also weight loss. is really difficult to lose weight if you are chronically stressed. And one of the things that I see is if stress is the main thing that is stopping you from losing weight, it's actually one of the most difficult things to turn around in terms of it takes a lot longer for you to see the impact of reducing stress.
Suddenly, once you get to that stage where actually you have reduced your stress levels, you find that the weight just melts off. But it can take weeks, if not months to get to that stage because we're so used to feeling in this state of stress that it's very difficult to make a big impact on reducing it. So to recap, the main things that you can do to increase your metabolism to help you lose weight are,
to eat healthily, specifically looking at protein and fiber and unrefined carbohydrates, to get some exercise, some HIIT, some strength training, to do some exercise that lights you up, to get a good night's sleep, to reduce your stress, and also just keep going. Keep doing it, keep doing it. Now, I know that this sounds like, my goodness, that sounds like so much to take on. How am I ever going to apply this to my life?
If you want to apply this to your life, this is exactly what I help people do. And I have a fabulous group program. If you are interested in finding out more about the group program and how the group program can help you, support you and make it easy to lose weight and implement healthy changes so that they just happen automatically in your life, then please book a call and we will chat about what it would look like if I were to support you. Have a fabulous day, week, and I will see you next week. Goodbye.
